[End of 1912]

FOREWORD

[3] Thanks to the works of Austrian theoreticians, above all thanks to the valuable work by Otto Bauer, "The National Question and Social Democracy," the national question has been transformed from a question of Austrian practice into a question of general socialist theory... Since here we must come out against certain final conclusions of Bauer,² we wish to note in advance that this can in no way diminish the value of his work... The separatist crisis again puts the question of nationalities on the agenda of the party and compels a principally new orientation, a profound clarification of these questions for ourselves.

## I. NATION AND ITS CHANGES

### BOURGEOIS AND SOCIALIST OUTLOOK

[5—6] Socialism is a new scientific outlook of humanity, which differs most fundamentally from all bourgeois outlooks. The bourgeois mode of cognition regards the various forms of organization and institutions of humanity either as products of nature, worthy of praise or condemnation depending on whether they appear to the bourgeoisie as corresponding to or contradicting "eternal human nature," or else it regards them as products of chance or human arbitrariness, which can be transformed according to one's own desire with the help of artificial, violent measures. In contrast, social democracy regards them as naturally arising products of the development of human society... The opposition between the bourgeois and socialist outlook consists in the following: there—immutability due to nature itself and at the same time arbitrariness; here—eternal becoming and constant changes according to unshakeable laws, on the basis of labor, on the basis of the mode of conducting the economy.

This is also true with respect to the nation. The bourgeois outlook sees natural differences between people in the differences among nations; nations are groups of people united by commonality of race, origin, language. But at the same time the bourgeoisie believes that with the help of political measures of coercion it can in some cases suppress nations and in other cases increase its territorial sphere at the expense of other nations.

Social democracy sees in nations groups of people whose unity has arisen due to their shared history...

### NATION AS COMMUNITY OF FATE

[6—9] Bauer characterizes the nation very aptly as "a totality of people united by community of fate into a characteristic community." This definition has often been criticized, but unjustly, since it is completely correct. Misunderstanding and confusion always consist in conflating the concepts of "homogeneity" and "community." Community of fate means not subjection to the same fate, but the shared experience of one and the same fate in the process of constant connections and relations, in continuous mutual influence of people on each other. Peasants in China, India, and Egypt are very similar due to the equality of their mode of economy; they have one and the same class character, but nevertheless there is not even a hint of community here. In contrast, in England the petty bourgeoisie, wholesale merchants, workers, noble landowners, peasants can of course differ as much as one pleases in character due to their different class position, but despite this, they form one community: shared lived history, constant influence that they alternately exert on each other, even if in the form of mutual struggle—all this, mediated through a common language, unites them into one characteristic community, into one nation. The spiritual content of this community, the shared culture through written language, is transmitted as heritage from earlier generations to subsequent generations...

Of course, here we have in mind not temporary unions created to achieve special goals, for example, joint-stock companies or trade unions. But any organization of people that as a permanently existing union passes from generation to generation forms a characteristic community arising from community of fate.

Another example is religious communities. They too are "congealed history." They are not simply a group of people of the same faith—they have united for the sake of religious goals... Religious communities that arose during the period of the Reformation—Protestant churches and sects—were organizations of class struggle against the dominant church and against each other, that is, to a certain extent they corresponded to modern political parties... Since that time these organizations have ossified, transformed into purely religious communities in which only the ruling layer, the clergy, communicates on the scale of the entire church. Community of interests has disappeared... Thus, the religious community forms a group whose community of fate lies far in the past and is now increasingly disappearing. Religion is also an imprint of historical past within ourselves.

So, the nation is not the only characteristic community arising from community of fate, but only one form of such community... The original small or large tribal associations of people represented such a community of fate or were such characteristic communities within which particular characteristics, customs, culture, and dialect of oral speech were inherited. So too it was in village communes or in districts of medieval peasantry. In the Middle Ages, in the period of the Hohenstaufen,³ Otto Bauer finds the existence of a "German nation" in the form of political and cultural community of German nobility. On the other hand, the medieval church also had many features that transformed it into a kind of nation; it was a community of European peoples, had shared history and shared views, even one common language—Church Latin, which mediated mutual communication between educated, ruling minds of all Europe and united them into one cultural community. Only in the final period of the Middle Ages do nations in the modern sense gradually arise from this community—with their own national language, with national unity and national culture.

The common language as a living means of communication between people is the most important characteristic of a nation; but therefore nations are still not simply the same as groups of people with the same language. Despite the same language, the English and Americans represent two nations with different histories, two communities different in their fate, manifesting significant differences in national character. It is equally questionable whether Swiss Germans should be included in one common German nation that encompasses all people speaking German. Through the same written language very many elements of culture can of course move freely in one direction or another, but fate separated the Swiss and Germans already several centuries ago. The fact that some are free citizens of a democratic republic while others lived sometimes under the tyranny of small princes, sometimes under foreign domination, sometimes under the oppression of the new German police state—this circumstance necessarily had to give them a very different character, despite reading the works of the same writers and poets; therefore here there can hardly be any question of community of fate and community of character. The significance of the political moment manifests itself even more clearly in the Dutch...

### PEASANT NATION AND MODERN NATION

[9—13] Peasants are often characterized as steadfast guardians of nationality. But at the same time Otto Bauer characterizes them as a remnant of nations that do not participate in the creation of culture. This contradiction points to the fact that the "national" in peasantry is something completely different from that which creates modern nations. Although modern nationality derives from peasant nationality, nevertheless in its essence they are completely different...

Whether Slovenes and Serbs, Russians and Ruthenians will become one national community with shared written language and culture, or whether they will become two nations—this is necessarily and finally decided by actual development. Decisive significance belongs not to language, but to the process of political-economic development... The Slovenian nation arises only together with the arising of modern bourgeois classes, which constitute themselves as a special nation: the peasant, however, enters into its composition only when actual interests bind him to this community.

Modern nations are wholly and entirely products of bourgeois society; they arose simultaneously with the development of commodity production, especially with the development of capitalism; the bearers or representatives of the nation are the bourgeois classes. Bourgeois production together with its commodity circulation requires the existence of large economic units, requires vast territories whose population it unites into one community with unified state administration. Developed capitalism increasingly strengthens central state power; it more tightly unites the state and more forcefully separates it from other states. The state is the fighting organization of the bourgeoisie. The economy of the bourgeoisie is based on competition, on struggle against similar bourgeoisie, and therefore the unions into which it organizes itself necessarily wage struggle with each other; the more powerful the state power, the greater the advantages it promises to yield for its bourgeoisie. The boundaries of these states were determined for this reason mainly according to the linguistic characteristic; under these conditions, areas with related dialects of speech, insofar as other forces did not intervene, were interested in political unification, since political unity, new community of fate, requires a unified language as a means of communication. From some one dialect a written language is created and a language for communication, which therefore is in a certain sense an artificially created language. For, as Otto Bauer correctly says, "with the people with whom I maintain the closest relations, I create a common language for myself with them." Thus arose national states, which at the same time are both state and nation.⁽¹⁾ They became a political unity not simply because they already represented a national community; the basis of firm unification of people into such large formations is new economic interest, economic necessity; but the reason that precisely these and not other states arose—that, for example, not Southern Germany and Northern France, but Southern and Northern Germany together formed one political unity—the reason for this lies mainly in the initial kinship of speech dialects.

⁽¹⁾ Therefore in Western Europe the concepts of "state" and "nation" are used in the same meaning. "State debt" is called "national debt," and the interests of the state community always mean "national interests."

Within one national state, due to its capitalist development and expansion, there exists a motley diversity of classes and nationalities; therefore there are still doubts whether such a state can be called a community of fate or a characteristic community, since not all of them (classes and nationalities) directly influence each other. But the community of fate of German peasants and large capitalists, Bavarians and Oldenburgers consists in the fact that all of them are members of the German Empire, that within these bounds they must necessarily wage their economic and political struggles, bear the burdens of one policy, occupy a definite position with respect to one and the same laws, and therefore exert a definite influence on each other; thus they form an actual community despite all differences within this community.

It is otherwise where states arose under the conditions of the rule of absolutism as dynastic unions, without direct participation of bourgeois classes, and therefore through conquests included tribes with the most diverse dialects. If in such states capitalism develops more deeply and broadly, then within one state several nations arise and it transforms into a multinational state, as for example Austria... Continuous contacts and conflicts of classes of bourgeois society with state power, which until now recognized only the German language as the official language of communication, force them to struggle for recognition of their language, for schools and for a place in state service, with the national intelligentsia being directly a materially interested class...

... Where capitalism penetrates and develops, a nation must necessarily arise as a community of fate of bourgeois classes. The struggle of nationalities in such a state is not a consequence of some oppression or backward legislation, but a natural expression of competition as the fundamental condition of bourgeois economy; mutual struggle is the meaning and purpose of sharp separation of different nations.

### THE SPIRITUAL WORLD OF MAN AND TRADITION

The nation is above all a community of culture mediated by a common language; in the culture of the nation, which can be called its spiritual nature, is reflected the entire history of its life. National character consists not in physical characteristics, but in the totality of its historically developed customs, views, and forms of thought...

[14—16] Marxist doctrine, historical materialism, explains that all that is spiritual in man is a product of the material world surrounding him. This entire actual world through the organs of sense penetrates from all sides into the spiritual world of man and is imprinted in it: these are our vital needs, our experience, all that we see and hear, what others communicate to us as their thoughts, as well as what we observe ourselves.⁽¹⁾ Consequently, any influence of the unreal, merely imagined, supernatural world is excluded. All that is spiritual is derived from the external world, which we call here the material world—and therefore material does not mean created from physical matter that can be weighed, but means all that actually exists, including the very thoughts themselves. But Reason here—as sometimes limited mechanistic outlook depicts it—does not act as a passive mirror reflecting the external world, nor as a dead storehouse that accepts and preserves all that is thrown into it. The spiritual world is active, effective, transforms all that penetrates into it from without into something new. And how it transforms this is most clearly shown by Dietzgen. Like an infinite, constantly changing stream the external world flows past Reason; Reason holds its effects, collects them, adds them to its previously acquired property and combines them with each other. From the stream of infinitely diverse phenomena it creates congealing, stable concepts in which flowing reality appears as if stopped and congealed, and its transitory character is annihilated. In the concept "fish" is contained a multitude of observations of swimming animals; in the concept "good"—countless relations to various actions; in the concept "capitalism"—an entire life, often filled with the most agonizing experience. Every thought, every conviction, every idea, every inference, for example, "in winter trees are bare," "labor is difficult and unpleasant," "my capitalist is my benefactor," "the capitalist is my enemy," "organization is strength," "it is good to struggle for one's nation"—are a generalization of a part of the living world, a generalization of diverse experience in the form of a short, meager, one might say even dry and lifeless formula. The greater and more complete the practice that as material is fixed in this formula, the more founded and stable is the thought, conviction. But every experience is limited, the world constantly changes its face, all new and new practical cognitions are added to the old, combined with old ideas or come into contradiction with them. Then man must transform his ideas, abandon some of them—for example, the idea of the capitalist as benefactor; give certain concepts new meaning—for example, from the concept of fish distinguish whales; put forward new concepts for new phenomena—for example, the concept of imperialism; find new causal connections between concepts—for example, the unbearability of labor flows from the nature of capitalism; give different evaluation to concepts than before—for example, national struggle harms workers; in short, man must constantly re-educate himself. In that consists all spiritual activity and all development of people—that they continuously transform concepts, ideas, judgments, and principles in order as much as possible to more closely link them with ever richer experience of reality. Consciously this occurs in the development of science.

In this connection the significance of Bauer's definition comes out better—that the nation is a historical element within ourselves, that national character is congealed history. Common material reality generates common thinking in the minds of members of a given community. The particular nature of that economic unity that they all together form determines their thoughts, morals, and views; it creates in them a mutually dependent and interconnected system of ideas, one ideology, which is common to them and forms a constituent part of their material life position. Shared experiences are imprinted in their spiritual world, such as: shared struggle for freedom against external enemies, common class battles within the country. This struggle and these battles are recorded in history textbooks, are communicated to youth as national past. What the entire rising bourgeoisie strove for, awaited, and desired was sung and clearly expressed by poets, writers, and philosophers, and these thoughts in the form of literature became the property of the nation, were preserved for subsequent generations as a spiritual imprint of the material, life experience of the nation. Constant spiritual influence of people on each other strengthens and reinforces all this: singling out from the thinking of individual members of the nation the general, essential, and characteristic, constant spiritual influence of people on each other creates the cultural wealth of the nation. The living spiritual world of the nation, its national culture, is an abstract generalization of its common life experience, its material being as an economic unity.

So, all that is spiritual in man is a product of actual reality, but not only of today's reality—all the past more or less persistently continues to live in this spiritual world. With respect to matter, the spiritual world is inert—it continuously receives external influences and at the same time its old content slowly passes into the stream of oblivion. Thus, the content of the spiritual world only gradually adapts to ever new actual reality. Two factors, the present and the past, determine its content, but determine it differently. That which as living reality continuously influences the spiritual world in the same way becomes more firmly and strongly imprinted in it. And that which in today's reality no longer finds confirmation, is nourished only at the expense of the past; it can persist for a long time above all thanks to mutual influence of people on each other, through artificial teaching and propaganda, but, having lost its material soil on which it grew, the past must necessarily wither and waste away. Then it acquires a traditional character. Tradition is also a part of actual reality that exists in the minds of people, exerts influence on others and therefore often possesses great and even enormous force. But it is actual reality of a spiritual nature, whose material roots lie in the past. Thus, for example, religion in the head of the modern proletarian has become an ideology of purely traditional character; it can still very strongly determine the actions of this proletarian, but this force is rooted only in the past, in the earlier significance of religious community for his entire life; in his contemporary actual reality, in his exploitation by capital, in his struggle against capital, religion no longer finds nourishment for itself. Therefore it will increasingly die away in him. In contrast, owing to contemporary actual reality, class consciousness will increasingly grow, therefore it occupies an ever larger place in the spiritual world of the proletarian, increasingly determines his actions.

### OUR TASK

[17—18] What has been said above also sets the task for our investigation. History has created nations in their isolation and in their specificity. But at the same time they do not yet represent something completed, something one must simply take into account as a final fact. For history continues to move forward. Every day builds and rebuilds what was built in previous days. Consequently, it will be insufficient merely to state that the nation is a historical element within ourselves, that the nation is congealed history. If it is nothing more than congealed history, then by its nature it is purely traditional, similar to religion. But for our practice, for our tactics, the greatest importance belongs to the question of whether the nation is not something more. Of course, as with any great spiritual force hidden in man, one must take the nation into account in any case; but there is certainly a great difference in whether national ideology appears only as a force of the past, or whether it has its roots in the contemporary world. For us the most important and determining question is: how does contemporary reality influence the nation and the national? In what sense does it change now? This actual reality of which we speak here is highly developed capitalism with its proletarian class struggle.

Consequently, there arises the following position with respect to Bauer's investigation. Previously in the theory and practice of social democracy, the nation played no role. There was no reason for this; in most countries, to wage class struggle it was not at all necessary to pay attention to the national moment. Bauer, compelled by Austrian practice, corrected this deficiency. He proved that the nation is not the imagination of some literati or an artificial product of national propaganda; using the instruments of Marxism, he pointed to its historical material roots and explained the necessity and force of national ideas by the ascending development of capitalism. Thus, the nation appeared before us as a powerful actual reality that we must take into account in our struggle; it gives keys to understanding the contemporary history of Austria, and therefore it is necessary to give an answer to the following question as well: how and in what way does the nation, the national, influence class struggle? How must we take the nation into account in class struggle? This is the basis and guiding thread in Bauer's work and that of other Austrian Marxists. But in this way the task is solved only half. For the nation is not simply a ready phenomenon whose influence on class struggle needs to be investigated. The nation itself is subject to the influence of contemporary forces, and among these forces the revolutionary liberating struggle of the proletariat increasingly occupies the first place. Therefore, conversely, how does class struggle now influence the nation, the rise of the proletariat? This question Bauer did not investigate, or investigated only insufficiently; in many cases discussion of this question leads to judgments and conclusions that deviate from Bauer's judgments and conclusions.

## II. NATION AND PROLETARIAT

### CLASS ANTAGONISM

[19—21] The contemporary reality that in the strongest degree determines the spiritual world and essence of man is capitalism. However, capitalism does not influence commonly living people equally—for capitalists it represents something completely different than for proletarians. For members of the bourgeois class, capitalism is a world for the production of wealth and a world of competition; the process of production provides the capitalist with growing prosperity and growth of capital mass, with which he strives to win as much as possible in individual competition with his like and which opens for him the path to luxury and enjoyment of refined culture. For the worker, capitalism is a world of stubborn, endless slavish labor, constant uncertainty in life, eternal poverty, without hope of obtaining even slightly more than for meager subsistence. Therefore, capitalism influences the spiritual world of the bourgeoisie completely differently than the spiritual world of the exploited class. The nation is an economic unity, a labor community, including workers and capitalists. For capital and labor are necessary to each other and must unite so that capitalist production can take place. But this labor community has a peculiar nature; within this community capital and labor appear as opposite poles; they form a labor community in that sense and in the manner that carnivorous beasts and their prey form a community of life.

The nation is a characteristic community arising from community of fate. But together with the development of capitalism, between the bourgeoisie and proletariat of one and the same people, differences in fate increasingly begin to predominate. As for shared experience of one and the same fate, there is hardly any question here. Bauer, to clarify the thought about community of fate, speaks (p. 113) of "relations that connected English workers with English bourgeoisie due to the fact that representatives of both these classes lived in one and the same city, read on walls the same posters, read the same newspapers, took part in one and the same political or sporting events, due to the fact that representatives of workers and bourgeoisie occasionally spoke with each other themselves or both conducted negotiations with the same persons acting as mediators between capitalists and workers." But the "fate" of people does not consist in reading the same posters on walls, but in important, significant life experience that is completely different for both classes. Everyone knows the saying of English minister Disraeli⁵ about two nations that in our contemporary society live in one and the same country side by side, not understanding each other. This saying means nothing other than that both classes are no longer united by any community of fate.

Of course, this saying should not be understood literally in the contemporary sense. For the earlier community of fate still continues to act within the existing characteristic community now. So long as the proletarian has not clearly realized his particular life experience, so long as his class consciousness has hardly or not yet awakened, he remains a prisoner of traditional thinking, spiritually lives at the expense of the leavings of the bourgeoisie and forms with it a kind of cultural community—true, in the manner that servants in the kitchen form a table community with their masters. This spiritual community in England, due to its particular history, is still very strong, in Germany, however, is extremely weak. Everywhere where capitalism in young nations develops along an ascending line, the spiritual world of the working class remains under the dominion of traditions of an earlier petty bourgeois and peasant period. Then only gradually, simultaneously with the awakening of class consciousness and with the development of class struggle under the conditions of a new, polarly opposite content of life, does the characteristic community of both classes increasingly disappear.

Of course, links and relations still persist between them. But they increasingly reduce themselves to the orders of factory organization and to work assignments, for which, as the use of foreign workers proves, there is no longer need for community of language. The more workers realize their position, realize exploitation, and the more frequently they wage struggle with entrepreneurs for improvement of labor conditions, the more the links and relations of both classes become filled with hostility and struggle. Here there is between them community as small as between two peoples waging continuous struggle for their borders. And the more workers come to know the laws of the development of history and the more brightly shines before their eyes the light of socialism as the necessary goal of struggle, the more do they perceive the rule of the capitalist class as alien rule. In these words the concept of characteristic community completely disappears.

Bauer characterizes national character as "difference in the direction of desires," as "the fact that the same motive cause produces different movements, that one and the same external position leads to different decisions." (P. 111.) Can one imagine anything more opposite than the direction of desires of the bourgeoisie and proletariat? The names of Bismarck, Lassalle,⁶ mention of 1848, evoke in German workers and German bourgeoisie not only different but directly opposite sensations. German imperial workers, belonging to the German nation, almost all in the German Empire evaluate differently and oppositely from how the bourgeoisie evaluates this. All other classes together fanatically strive to create the external greatness and power of their national state—the proletariat struggles against all measures serving the achievement of this goal. Bourgeois classes speak of war against other states in order to increase their own power—the proletariat, however, thinks of how to prevent war, or how from the defeat of its own government to find the possibility for its own liberation.

### STRIVING TO CREATE A NATION

[22—29] Actually, what constitutes Czech nation as a special community opposed to German nation? The content of community of fate, namely the stock of shared experiences that practically continue to act, determining national character, in Czech nation is extremely poor. The content of its culture is almost entirely borrowed from older contemporary nations, that is, above all from Germans... How then from this, on the basis of a special language, could a special "national culture" arise? It arose because the bourgeoisie needs division, because it wants a clear boundary, because it has desire and striving to constitute itself as a nation in opposition to the Germans. It wants this because it is necessary to it, because capitalist competition forces it to monopolize for itself as much as possible a definite territory for sale and for exploitation. The opposition of interests with respect to other capitalists creates a nation where there is one necessary element for this, namely: a special, separate language. From the excellent exposition of the process of arising of the nation that Bauer and Renner⁷ gave, above all it becomes clear that it was precisely the will of the rising bourgeoisie that was the force which created the nation. Of course, this concerns strivings not in the sense of conscious desire or in the sense of arbitrariness, but of such desire that is at the same time the Ought, necessary action of economic factors. "Nations," of which they speak in political struggle, which wage struggle with each other for influence on the state, for power in the state (Bauer, § 19), are nothing other than organizations of bourgeois classes—petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, intelligentsia, that is, classes whose existence is based on competition, with proletarians and peasants playing the role of lower vassals.

With this competitive need of bourgeois classes, with their striving to create a nation, the proletariat has nothing in common. For it the nation does not mean the privilege of having buyers, the availability of service posts or the possibility of obtaining work. The capitalists explained this to the proletariat from the very beginning through the importation of foreign workers. Reference to this capitalist practice is not so much an exposure of national hypocrisy as it ought above all to convince workers that under the rule of capitalism the nation cannot mean for them the possession of a monopoly on labor. And only as an exception in backward workers, as for example in old American union workers, can one hear of striving to restrict immigration. Of course, sometimes the national can have some significance also for the proletariat. When capitalism first penetrates peasant areas, then manufacturers belong to the capitalistically more progressive nation, and workers, descendants of peasants in these areas, belong to another nation. Then national feeling can be for workers the first means allowing them to realize the community of their interests and its opposition to foreign capitalists. National antagonism is here a primitive form of class opposition—similar to how in the Rhineland-Westphalia region during the time of the "Kulturkampf" religious antagonism between Catholic workers and liberal manufacturers was a primitive form of class opposition. But when the development of the nation reaches such a scale that within it arises a national bourgeoisie engaged in exploitation, then this proletarian nationalism loses its roots. In the struggle for better living conditions, for spiritual development, for culture, for human existence, the bitter enemies of workers are other classes of their own nation, and the comrades of workers in class, speaking other languages, are their friends and helpers. Class struggle creates in the proletariat an international community of interests. Consequently, there can be no question for the proletariat of striving to constitute itself as a nation in opposition to other nations, of such striving whose basis lies in economic interests, in the material position of the proletariat.

### COMMUNITY OF CULTURE

Bauer, however, finds in class struggle another force acting for the proletariat as a force creating the nation. He finds it not in the economic content of class struggle, but in its influence on culture. The policy of the contemporary working class he characterizes (pp. 160—161) as an evolutionary-national policy that strives actually to transform the entire people into a nation. According to Bauer's opinion, this should mean something more than a primitive-popular way of expressing our goals in the language of nationalism and making them accessible to workers, who, held captive by national ideology, do not yet understand the great world-revolutionary significance of socialism. Therefore, Bauer adds: "Since the proletariat necessarily wages struggle for the possession of the goods of culture that are created by its labor and that are possible thanks to its labor, then an inevitable consequence of this policy is the call for the entire people to take part in the creation of national community of culture and thereby actually transform the entire people into a nation."

At first glance this seems completely correct. So long as workers are deeply oppressed and suppressed by capitalist exploitation, so long as workers perish from physical misery and languish without hope, without spiritual activity, they do not take part in the consumption of that culture of bourgeois classes, the foundation of which is created by their labor. They belong to the nation as little as cattle in a stable. They represent only property, only lower vassals of the nation. Class struggle awakens workers to life; they win for themselves free time and higher wages; thereby they win for themselves the possibility of spiritual development. Socialism awakens their energy, stimulates the development of their spiritual world; they begin to read—first socialist pamphlets and political newspapers, but soon passionate desire and need for further expansion of their spiritual world pushes workers to take up literary works, to works on history, on natural science; party committees on education matters especially earnestly strive to instill in them taste even for classical literature. Thus they enter into the community of culture of bourgeois classes of their nation. The worker now, in the meager free hours after exhausting labor, only at the cost of heavy effort can acquire from this culture a few small fragments; in contrast, under socialism, freed from the endless torture of labor, the worker will be able freely and without hindrance to proceed along this path of spiritual development; only then will he perceive all of...

national culture and in the truest sense will become a member of the nation.

But in this consideration of the question, one important moment is overlooked, namely: the commonality of culture between workers and bourgeoisie can exist only superficially, only in external form and temporarily. Workers may partially read the same books as the bourgeoisie reads, read the same classics and the same books on natural science; but despite this, for this reason there does not arise any commonality of culture; workers read something completely different from these works than the bourgeoisie does, because the foundation of their thinking, their worldview, is fundamentally different. As already noted above, national culture does not hang in the air; it is an expression of the material history of life of the classes whose rise created the nation. In the works of Schiller and Goethe there find expression not abstract fantasies about the beautiful, but the feelings and ideals of the young bourgeoisie, its striving for freedom and guarantees of human rights, its particular manner of viewing the world and its problems. The class-conscious worker today has other feelings, other ideals, and another worldview: if he reads of the individualism of Tell or of eternal, inalienable human rights existing in heaven, then the spiritual world expressed in this is not his spiritual world; his spiritual world has matured through a deeper understanding of society, and the worker knows that only the organization of the masses can win human rights for them. The worker is not indifferent to the beauty of the former literature, but precisely because of his understanding of history he can understand the ideals of preceding generations, deducing them from the economics of those generations; he together with them feels the force of these ideals, and therefore understands and appreciates the beauty of those works in which they found their most complete expression. For that which is beautiful is that which fully grasps and portrays what is universal, essential, most profound in the content of reality. Moreover, much in the feelings of the revolutionary bourgeoisie awakens a strong echo in the worker; but what finds an echo in him, precisely that does not find an echo in the contemporary bourgeoisie...

The most essential spiritual content, the determining ideas, the actual culture of German social-democrats have their roots not in Schiller and Goethe, but in Marx and Engels. And this culture, combining within itself a clear socialist understanding of history and the future of society, the socialist ideal of a classless free humanity and proletarian, universal for all morality—that is, a culture in all its essential traits directly opposite to bourgeois culture—is an international culture. Let it have different coloration among various peoples, just as the worldview of proletarians acquires different character depending on differences in life situation and forms of economy; let it still be strongly influenced by the particular prehistory of the nation, especially in conditions of weakly developed class struggle; despite this, the essential content of this culture is everywhere the same...

Socialist culture is a product of struggle, which is a struggle against the entire bourgeois world...

Thus it is untrue that workers through their struggle enter into a higher "national commonality of culture." The policy of the proletariat, the international policy of class struggle, creates within the ranks of the proletariat a new, international socialist culture.

COMMONALITY OF CLASS STRUGGLE

Bauer opposes to nations as communities of shared fate the class, in which identity of fate ("Gleichartigkeit"—homogeneity) engenders identical characteristic traits. But the working class is not simply a group of people with identical fate, and therefore with identical character. Class struggle forges out of the proletariat one commonality of shared fate. Commonly experienced fate is a common struggle against one and the same enemy...

Here only one difference has any significance—the difference of language; all clarifications, all proposals and communications must be conducted for each in its own language. During the last major strikes in America (for example, at the steel mills in McKees Rocks or in the textile industry in Lawrence), the strikers, representing a motley mixture of the most diverse nationalities—French, Italians, Poles, Turks, Syrians, etc.—united into separate sections according to the linguistic principle: committees of these sections were constantly together, simultaneously communicated each section's proposals in its language, and thus maintained unity as a whole; this is proof of how one must implement in practice close proletarian commonality of struggle despite the difficulty occasioned by difference of language. In this case to desire organizational separation of what is united in life and struggle, by actual interest, as separatism desires, means to go against reality to such a great extent that this can succeed only temporarily.

But this is true not only of workers of one and the same factory. In order to be able to conduct their struggle successfully, workers of the entire country must unite in one trade union, and all members of this trade union regard the advance of any local group as the success of their own struggle...

The same is true in regard to political struggle. The "Communist Manifesto" of Marx and Engels speaks of this thus: "If not in content, then in form the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country, of course, must first of all settle accounts with its own bourgeoisie." Obviously, in this proposition the word "national" is used not in the Austrian sense, but arose as a result of Western European conditions, where "nation" and "state" are used as words having the same meaning. This proposition of Marx and Engels means simply that the English worker cannot conduct class struggle against the French bourgeoisie, nor the French worker against the English, that English bourgeoisie and English state power can be attacked and eliminated only by the English proletariat. In Austria, the state and nation are different formations...

NATION IN THE STATE OF THE FUTURE

Socialist mode of production does not lead to the development of conflicting interests between nations, as capitalist mode of production does. The economic unit is not the state or nation, but the entire world. This socialist mode of production is something greater than the union of national production units into one whole through wise politics of mutual relations and international agreements, as Bauer portrays it on page 519 of his book. Socialist mode of production is the organization of world production into one single whole, this is the common task of all humanity. Within the framework of this universal community, whose beginning is already now formed by the internationality of the proletariat, the question of autonomy, for example, of the German nation can be raised no more than the question of the autonomy of Bavaria, the city of Prague, or Pölnähutte. All regulate partially their own affairs, and all, as parts of a whole, depend on the whole. The concept of autonomy as a whole arises in the capitalist epoch, when relations of domination necessarily entail also their opposite—freedom from a certain domination...

CHANGES IN THE NATION

For the proletariat, the national has significance only as tradition; the roots of the national reach into the past, and in the living conditions of existence of the proletariat there is no soil for it. Consequently, for the proletariat the matter with the nation stands similar to the way it stands with religion. Of course, alongside this kinship one should also bear in mind the difference. The material roots of religious antagonisms reach into deep antiquity and are almost unknown to people living now; therefore these antagonisms themselves are completely severed from all material interests and appear as purely abstract disagreements on supernatural questions. On the contrary, the material roots of national antagonisms are directly at our back, in the contemporary bourgeois world, with which we continuously collide...

Thus our investigation leads us to a completely different point of view than that of Bauer. Bauer, in opposition to bourgeois nationalism, assumes constant change of the nation, the emergence of its new forms and characters; thus, for example, the German nation appeared in history in ever new forms, beginning with ancient Germans and ending with its future membership in socialist society. But with these changing forms the nation itself is preserved; certain nations can perish or, conversely, arise, but the nation in general still always remains the basic form of organization of humanity. According to the result of our investigation, the nation, on the contrary, is only a temporary and transient form of organization in the history of humanity's development, one of many forms of organization that succeed one another or exist alongside one another: tribes, peoples, world empires, religions and churches, rural communes, states. Among them, the nation in its peculiarity is, in essence, a product of bourgeois society, and it will disappear together with the disappearance of bourgeois society...

For Bauer, the nation is "the never-completed product of a constantly developing process"; for us it is an episode in the infinite process of progressive development of humanity. For Bauer, the nation is a constantly preserved basic element of humanity; his theory is a consideration of all human history from the point of view of nationalities. Forms of economy change, classes arise and perish, but all this is merely transformation of the nation, occurs within the bounds of the nation. The nation remains what is primary, to which classes and their changes merely impart ever new content. Therefore Bauer also expresses the ideas and goals of socialism in the language of nationalism and speaks of the nation where others spoke of the people and of humanity: because of private property in the means of labor the "nation" let slip from its hands its own fate; the "nation" did not consciously make a decision about this; capitalists determine the fate of the "nation"; the "nation" of the future will itself arrange its own fate; we have already adduced above the example of "national workshops." Thus he comes to the point of characterizing two opposite directions in policy—socialist policy, directed toward the future, and capitalist policy, striving to preserve the contemporary economic order—as evolutionarily-national and conservatively-national policy. In a similar manner, according to the above comparison, one could characterize socialism as evolutionarily-capitalist policy...

What has our criticism of Bauer's views constantly come down to? To a different evaluation of spiritual and material forces. Whereas he constructed his theory on the indestructible force of the spiritual, on ideology as an independent force, we have always emphasized its dependence on economic conditions. With this deviation from Marxist materialism, it is quite natural that Bauer has repeatedly appeared as a follower of Kantian philosophy and is considered a Kantian...

III. SOCIALIST TACTICS

NATIONAL DEMANDS

National slogans and goals distract workers from their own proletarian goals. They separate workers of different nations from one another, introduce enmity into their relations with one another, and thereby destroy the necessary unity of the proletariat. They unite workers and bourgeoisie into one front of struggle, place them alongside one another, and thereby obscure the class consciousness of workers and turn the proletariat into a tool of bourgeois politics...

Therefore such state-national goals as, for example, the restoration of an independent Polish national state should occupy no place in socialist propaganda. Not for the reason that an independent national state would be of no significance to the proletariat. For it is harmful to the development of clear class consciousness if—thanks to Russian domination, which protects Polish capitalists—hatred against exploitation and oppression easily takes the form of national hatred for foreign oppressors. But because the restoration of Poland as an independent state in the era of capitalism is utopian. The same applies to Bauer's solution of the Polish question: to the national autonomy of Poland within the Russian empire. However desirable or necessary this goal might be for the Polish proletariat, so long as capitalism dominates, real development is determined not by what the proletariat considers necessary for itself, but by what the ruling class wants. But if the proletariat is strong enough to achieve the realization of its will, then the value of such autonomy is infinitely small compared to the value of its class demands leading to socialism. The struggle of the Polish proletariat against the actual political power under whose oppression it suffers—be it the Russian, Prussian, or Austrian government—this struggle as a national struggle is fruitless; only as a class struggle does it lead to the achievement of the goal. The only attainable and therefore necessary goal is: together with other workers of these states to eliminate capitalist state power and conquer socialism. But under socialism the goal of Polish independence no longer makes any sense, since then nothing will prevent the freedom of all people speaking Polish to unite into one administrative unit.

Consequently, in the position regarding both Polish socialist parties, the difference in evaluation becomes clear. Bauer emphasizes that both have their own justification, since each embodies one aspect of the essence of the Polish worker: the "PPS"—national feelings, the social-democrats of Poland and Lithuania—international class struggle. This is true, but it is insufficient. We will not solve the question by means of too objective a historical method, which proves how to understand any phenomenon or direction and how it flows from natural causes. We must add that one aspect of this essence is strengthened by development, while the other decreases. The principle of one party has its basis in the future, the principle of the other in the past; one represents a great force of progress, the other represents tradition serving as a brake. Therefore for us both parties are not equal: as Marxists, who find our principle in the science of actual development, as revolutionary social-democrats, who see our principle in class struggle, we must acknowledge the rightness of one party and support its point of view against the other party.

Above we spoke of the fact that for the proletariat national slogans have no value. But are there not among national demands a few such as are highly important to workers and for the implementation of which they therefore must struggle together with the bourgeoisie? For example, do not national schools, where children of proletarians can study in their native language, represent something valuable? For us they are not national, but proletarian demands...

IDEOLOGY AND CLASS STRUGGLE

Marxist tactics of social-democracy are based on knowledge of the actual class interests of workers. Social-democracy does not allow itself to be deceived by various ideologies, however firmly they may seem to be rooted in the consciousness of people...

Let us take religion as an example.

Religion is the most powerful ideology of the past, which attempts to establish its domination over the proletariat and hold it back from consolidated class struggle. Immature social-democrats, seeing before them this enormous obstacle to socialism, could attempt either to wage direct struggle against religion and prove the falsity of religious teachings, as bourgeois Enlighteners did before, in order thereby to undermine the influence of religion. Or, on the contrary, they could present socialism as improved Christianity, as the true fulfillment of religious teachings and thus attract believing Christians to the side of socialism. But everywhere they only made such attempts, both methods proved unsuccessful; theoretical attacks on religion were unable to cause it any damage and strengthened prejudices against socialism; redressing in Christian garb also attracted no one, since the tradition to which people firmly adhered is not some Christianity in general, but a specific Christian teaching. And it is clear that these social-democrats were bound to fail. For through the theoretical discussions and debates that these attempts provoked, minds turn their attention precisely to abstract religious questions, turn away from actual reality, and the influence of ideology strengthens in thinking. Faith in general is inaccessible to theoretical proofs; only when its soil disappears, when former conditions of life have vanished and a new worldview grows in people, does doubt in old teachings and dogmas appear. Only a new reality, reflected ever more distinctly in consciousness, can overturn antiquated traditional faith; of course, for this the new reality must first be clearly comprehended by people. Only through constant contact with reality is the human mind freed from the force of traditional ideas.

Therefore Marxist social-democracy does not think of waging struggle against religion by means of theoretical arguments or of putting religion to its service. This would artificially revive abstract traditional ideas instead of their gradual disappearance. Our tactic consists in constantly explaining to workers their true class interests, showing them vividly the reality of society and their life, so that their minds increasingly turn their attention to the reality of the present world. Then old ideas, finding no more nourishment in the actual life of the proletariat, will themselves fall asleep forever. What people think about theological questions is for us indifferent, so long as they together struggle for the new economic order of socialism. Therefore social-democracy never delivers speeches nor conducts discussions about the existence of God or on disputed religious questions; it always speaks only about capitalism, about exploitation, about class interests, about the necessity for workers to together conduct class struggle. In this way it diverts consciousness from inessential ideas of the past and draws it toward the reality of today; in this way it deprives these ideas of their force, which holds workers back from class struggle and from the realization of their class interests.

Of course, not immediately, not in one blow. What has solidly petrified in the consciousness of people can only be gradually decomposed and dissolved through the prolonged effect of a new force. How much time was required until Christian workers of the Rhineland-Westphalia in large masses abandoned the banner of the Center party and went over to the side of social-democracy! But social-democracy was not deceived by this; it did not attempt to accelerate the transition of Christian workers by making concessions to their religious prejudices; it did not allow itself to be drawn along the path of anti-religious propaganda; it did not become impatient at the insignificance of its successes. It did not lose faith in the victory of reality over tradition; it firmly adhered to principle; it did not go along false paths of tactics that promised speedier success; it always opposed ideology with class struggle. And now it sees that the fruits of its tactic are ripening more and more.

The matter stands analogously with nationalism—with only the difference that in this sphere, since nationalism is a younger, less petrified ideology, there is hardly any need to warn against the error of struggling against it by means of abstract theories, but all the more necessary to warn against the error of flirting with it and indulging it. And here we must emphasize class struggle and awaken class feelings, in order to divert attention from national questions...

Consequently, it would be a completely wrong tactic to strive to attract the masses of workers to the side of socialism by going along with their national feelings. By means of such national opportunism one can attract them to the party only externally, in appearance, but for our cause, for socialist views they will remain alien; bourgeois views will continue to dominate their consciousness as before. And when then the decisive hour comes, when it is necessary to choose between national and proletarian interests, then suddenly there will be revealed the inner weakness of this workers' movement—as it is now revealed in the separatist crisis. And how can we gather the masses under our banner if we allow them to bow before the banner of nationalism? Our principle of class struggle can dominate only when other principles, otherwise determining people's place in society and dividing them, cease to act; but if we by our propaganda raise respect for other principles, we bury our own cause.

Of course, as follows from the foregoing, it would be equally wrong to strive directly to wage struggle against national feelings and slogans. Where they are firmly rooted in people's heads, they can be eliminated not through theoretical arguments, but only through a more powerful reality, which is used to effect minds. One need only speak of this, and the attention of listeners immediately turns to the national, and they think only in the language of nationalism. Therefore one does not speak of these things at all, does not analyze them in detail...

SEPARATISM AND PARTY ORGANIZATION

In Austria, after the Wimberg Congress, the social-democratic party split along national lines, and each national workers' party cooperates with the parties of other nations on the principles of federalism. This national split of the proletariat did not cause major troubles, and many regard it as the natural organizational principle of the workers' movement in a country deeply divided into nations. But when this split did not remain confined to the sphere of political organization, but under the name of separatism spread to the trade unions, then the danger of this became immediately felt...

Since political struggle is common struggle against the entire bourgeoisie, one must clarify for oneself the broadest consequences and the deepest bases of worldview, while in trade union struggle, where arguments and immediate interests are palpably present before the eyes of participants, this invocation of common principles is not necessary and sometimes can even be harmful for maintaining the unity existing at a given moment of struggle...

Separatism in the trade union movement is merely an inevitable consequence of national autonomy of party organization...

Any ascending workers' movement is full of bourgeois ideas, which are gradually overcome only through development itself, through the practice of struggle and growing theoretical understanding. This bourgeois influence on the workers' movement, which in other countries appears as revisionism and anarchism, in Austria necessarily had to take the form of nationalism, since nationalism is not only the strongest bourgeois ideology, but in Austria is also in opposition to the state and bureaucracy. National autonomy is not simply an erroneous decision of some party congress which could have been avoided, but it is a natural form of development, gradually formed in virtue of the conditions themselves.

But when, through the conquest of universal suffrage, a parliamentary arena of the modern capitalist state was created and the proletariat became an important political force, this state of affairs could no longer persist without changes. Now it had to become evident whether the autonomous parties still formed one truly common party. Now it was no longer possible to get by with Platonic declarations of solidarity; now more solid unity was necessary in such a way that the socialist factions of the various national parties practically and actually submitted to one common will. This test the political movement did not withstand; in separate parts nationalism had already sunk such deep roots that they began to feel their kinship not only with other socialist factions, but equally, or even more, with the bourgeois parties of their nation...

The state, formerly weak and powerless in relation to nations, becomes ever more powerful through the development of large capital. The development of imperialism, which also seizes the Danubian Monarchy, places in the hands of the state ever more enormous means of power for conducting world politics, places upon the masses an ever heavier burden of military expenses and taxes, checks the opposition of bourgeois national parties and simply passes by the social-political demands of workers. Imperialism must greatly stimulate the joint class struggle of workers, provoke the sharpest antagonism between capital and labor, reduce the objects of national enmity to complete loss of their significance...

NATIONAL AUTONOMY

If we do not examine in detail the appeals and slogans of nationalism and constantly respond to them with slogans of class struggle, this does not at all mean that in regard to national questions we conduct a kind of ostrich policy. For these questions are real, they occupy people's minds and persistently demand their solution. We bring to the consciousness of workers that for them it is not these questions, but exploitation and class struggle that are most important, dominating all vital questions; but other questions therefore do not disappear from the actual world, and we must show that we are able to solve them.

For social-democracy does not simply give people hope in the state of the future, but in its program shows the demands of the current moment, shows how it intends to solve each individual question around which the struggle circles today. We strive not only to unite for joint class struggle workers-Christians with all others, regardless of religion; in our programmatic position—"Declaration of religion as a private matter"—we show workers the path how best to protect their religious interests without religious struggle and disputes. To the struggle of churches for power, which is inseparable from their character as organizations of domination, we oppose the principle of self-determination and freedom of all people to carry out their religious convictions without outside interference. This programmatic position does not give a solution to each individual question, but contains in itself its general solution, since it creates the basis on which individual questions can be regulated by free choice. When all forms of state coercion are eliminated, then any necessity for defense and disputes falls away; religious questions are excluded from the sphere of politics and entrusted to organizations which attract people to themselves by their free will.

In a similar manner we approach national questions. The social-democratic program of national autonomy represents in this sphere that practical solution which would make the struggle between nations pointless. Through the application of the personal principle (Personalprinzip) instead of the territorial principle, nations are recognized as organizations, whose lot in the framework of the state is care for all cultural interests of the national community. Through this each nation receives the right to regulate its own affairs independently, even if it represents a minority; no nationality will be forced to again and again conquer and retain for itself this right to power in struggle for influence on the state. In this way would be prepared complete cessation of the struggle of nations for power, which through endless obstructions paralyzes all parliamentary life and makes difficult any consideration of social questions. When bourgeois parties blindly raged against one another, advancing not a step forward, and helplessly stopped before the question of how to find a way out of the chaos, social-democracy showed the practical path by which just national wishes are to be fulfilled, causing harm to no one.

But all this still does not say that this program now has prospects for realization. We are all convinced that our demand for declaration of religion as a private matter, as well as the majority of our demands in the sphere of education, cannot be realized by the capitalist state... Nations are not simply groups of people having identical cultural interests and therefore wishing to live peacefully with other nations; they are fighting organizations of the bourgeoisie for the acquisition of power in the state... The realization of national autonomy in the form which social-democracy demands has as its basis democratic self-government. But the feudal-clerical, large-capitalist, militarist circles ruling Austria have only too well-grounded and natural fear of such self-government.

Is it really the case, however, that the bourgeoisie has an interest in ceasing national struggle? Quite the contrary, it has the greatest interest in not ceasing this struggle, and this interest is the greater the stronger the class struggle breaks through. For national antagonisms, like religious ones, represent an excellent means for the split of the proletariat, for diverting its attention from class struggle through the proclamation of ideological slogans, and for preventing its class unity. The instinctive striving of bourgeois classes to prevent the proletariat from achieving unity, clarity, and strength, increasingly becomes the main moment in the politics of the bourgeoisie. In such countries as England, Holland, America (USA), even in Germany (where the conservative party of junkers occupies a particular, exceptional position as a purely class party), we see that the struggle between the two major bourgeois parties—usually between the "liberal" party and the "conservative" or "clerical" party—becomes all the more acute, and the battle cries all the louder, the more real antagonism of interests between them disappears, and consequently their antagonism consists in ideological slogans arising from past history. He who understands Marxism schematically and therefore sees in political parties only representatives of the interests of bourgeois groups will here puzzle over the riddle: where one should expect that these parties, threatened by the proletariat, should merge into one reactionary mass, there, quite on the contrary, the split apparently becomes deeper and wider. This phenomenon is explained simply by that instinctive feeling of the bourgeoisie that one cannot achieve anything with the proletariat by violence alone and that it is infinitely much more important to deceive the proletariat and split it with the help of ideological slogans. Therefore in Austria, national struggle between diverse bourgeoisies will grow on an even larger scale the more it becomes pointless; the more the masters at the division of state power hide behind the scenes, the more furiously they attack each other over national trifles in public debates. Previously each bourgeoisie strived to unite the proletariat of its nation and lead it with them in order to have the possibility to struggle with greater force against the national enemy; now, on the contrary, the struggle against the national enemy must serve to unite the proletariat around bourgeois parties and thereby prevent the creation of its international unity. The same role that in other countries is called to play the battle cries: "Here is Christianity!", "Here is freedom of conscience!", to divert workers' attention from those social questions in which their class commonality and class antagonism toward the bourgeoisie would be revealed, that same role in Austria will increasingly be played by national battle cries.

Consequently, we can hardly count on the practical solution of national disputes which we have proposed being implemented precisely because that solution would make the national struggle itself pointless... National antagonisms will undermine the proletarian army only so long as socialist class consciousness is weakly developed. In the end class struggle simply goes beyond the bounds of the national dispute and develops further. In reality the fateful force of nationalism will be broken not through our proposal regarding national autonomy, the realization of which is not in our power, but only through the strengthening of class consciousness.

Therefore it would be an error if we directed all our force toward conducting a "positive national policy" and staked everything on the card of implementing our program concerning nationalities as a precondition for the development of class struggle. This programmatic demand, like the majority of our practical demands of the current moment, serves only to show how easily we would solve these questions if we already had power, and to make more sharply evident against the background of the reasonableness of our solutions the unreasonableness of bourgeois slogans. But while the bourgeoisie dominates, our reasonable solution will of course remain on paper. Our policy and our agitation can be directed only toward conducting class struggle always and only, awakening class feelings, so that workers, through clear understanding of reality, become indifferent to the slogans of nationalism.

Translated from the German

REMARKS ON PANNEKOUK'S PAMPHLET
"CLASS STRUGGLE AND NATION"

[End of 1912]

A. Pannekouk: "Klassenkampf und Nation". 
Reichenberg. 
1912.

—Minuses of the excellent pamphlet:

1) Dühringism—thought attributed to matter!! (p. 14).

2) Regarding religion (Private affair) everywhere in opportunistic sense interpreted as private affair.

3) Regarding Poland: "restoration of it utopia" (p. 40). Underestimated the distinction between Eastern Europe from "Western Europe" (which—everywhere—is correctly separated on the basis of the feature that nation here = state).

4) "Cultural-national autonomy" (p. 51 in the middle; 2nd paragraph, lines 5—6 from the top of the paragraph). Poor. Did not understand the significance of general political democratic demands in distinction from national ones.

First published in 1937 in Lenin Collection XXX